Most parents back measures to prevent COVID, poll finds

Daily Point

Poll says parents want remote option, in-person precautions

When Education Trust-New York commissioned its sixth poll of the pandemic to measure parent attitudes, it was not expecting some of the results the survey of 837 parents of New York K-12 students turned up.

The most shocking result? While 90% of parents surveyed by the Global Strategy Group think in-person learning is best, 60% would put their kids in remote learning during the pandemic if their districts offered it, a preference cutting across all racial and economic lines, including:

• White parents: 55%.
• Black parents: 72%.
• Hispanic parents: 69%.
• NYC parents: 79%.

On Long Island, 43% of respondents from districts with no remote option think one should be offered, and 45% say they’d choose remote if it were offered. Also, 95% of LI parents surveyed believe in-person learning is the best option when safe, and 82% believe students should be mandated to wear masks regardless of vaccination status.

"I think we were definitely stunned by those numbers, and particularly that there was such broad consensus," Education Trust-New York executive director Dia Bryant told The Point Tuesday. "For parents to be so supportive of in-person learning, yet so eager to have their children learn remotely, suggests a very high level of anxiety." Education Trust is a national nonprofit focused on advancing excellence and equity in education, with a broad range of contributors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

And while a word cloud of responses had "hopeful" and "optimistic" as the top responses, the next three were "worried," "anxious" and "stressed."

One illustration of that fear: 11% of parents of kindergarten-age children, and 17% in New York City, said they postponed their child’s school enrollment.

Overall, respondents were also strongly supportive of some controversial preventive measures like requiring masks for all students regardless of vaccinations status (83%), requiring weekly COVID-19 tests for unvaccinated teachers (86%), separating children in classrooms by at least three feet (90%), enforcing strict cleaning and ventilation protocols (97%), and enforcing quarantine and testing 3-5 days later for any student exposed to COVID.

State Sen. John Liu, who chairs a committee on New York City education, said he will pursue legislation to mandate the offering of a remote learning option in all school districts.

For more on the poll, check https://newyork.edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Back-to-School-2021-parent-poll.pdf

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

Rice’s drug price debate

One measure of the heat that Rep. Kathleen Rice has been taking for her committee vote last week against a drug-price control measure is the number of "Dear Friend" letters she has been moved to send to constituents.

She has sent hundreds, according to her office.

The form message includes the most detail yet from Rice on this particular vote during the markup process for the mammoth Build Back Better Act also known as the "human infrastructure" plan. She moved not to include language allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower-priced drugs, because this language "was being used as a tool to offset the cost" of the multitrillion-dollar bill. "That bill has no chance to become a law, as Democrats in the Senate have stated that a bill with such a price tag will not have the votes to pass in their chamber," Rice wrote.

The reasoning seems convoluted, as Rice herself twice voted for the drug-pricing negotiation strategy in separate settings.

Her argument, according to the letter, seems to rest on the way the price-control language would be used here to "offset" a big amount. "I made a promise to my constituents to be a fiscally-responsible steward of their tax dollars and to champion good policies that can be signed into law," the letter says. "Moving to advance a $3.5 trillion package, with several outstanding questions about how it will be paid for, would break that promise."

The drug price negotiation language could still end up in the final big bill through a separate committee route. Rice’s office didn’t answer when asked how she would vote on the final bill if the language was included.

The constituent letter does not appear to have fully swayed Rice’s critics, like the progressive advocacy group Our Revolution that plans to picket outside Rice’s Garden City office Wednesday morning. Other critics have complained about the way the pharmaceutical industry stands to benefit from blocking drug-price control efforts. Over 300 House members have recently accepted the industry’s largesse, according to an analysis from STAT, a digital information service about health, medicine, and life sciences. Rice is among those members but on a significantly lower scale than, for example, fellow Democrats Kurt Schrader and Scott Peters who joined her in her committee vote last week.

But at least some in the business sphere appear to be thankful.

"THANK YOU, REP. KATHLEEN RICE," said a message from early stage life sciences venture capital coalition Incubate, whose ad about "[s]upporting our region’s vibrant life sciences community" ran in Newsday on Sunday.

Incubate executive director John Stanford told The Point the ad was related to Rice’s markup vote and argues that price controls on successful drugs "would make investing in life sciences an even riskier proposition." Rice’s office said she did not ask for the ad and was not made aware of it.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

Who's buying what

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

Small agreements amid a big divide

At least two limited points of consensus are reflected in the dueling sets of partisan maps released last week by the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission.

One is in Nassau County. During the commission’s "listening-tour" hearings last month, Aubrey Phillips, president of the Parkhurst Civic Association in Elmont, called attention to how that 3.4-square-mile hamlet had seven elected officials representing it, including three state senators, making it nearly impossible to schedule a single meeting with them.

Both the GOP and Democratic proposals for 2022 appear to keep Elmont whole for a change in both state legislative houses.

Another bit of common ground is evident in the city of Rochester, which is currently divided among three State Senate districts. Democrats there have complained for years that the former Republican majority in the 63-seat house blatantly gerrymandered it. Now, both parties propose to have Rochester represented by a single Senate district.

Among political consultants who are following this first-time independent process, there seems to be another kind of consensus — that the tentative maps, posted on the commission’s website, are imprecise and lacking in critical detail.

All seem to further agree that this roughness stems from the fact that they were drawn in the expectation that the plans would change, perhaps dramatically, after a new round of public hearings. After that comes submission of a plan to the Legislature where approval is far from assured.

The most public disagreement so far between the commission’s evenly divided camps of Democrats and Republicans stems from their failure to agree on a single set of plans. GOP members suggest the current lack of consensus signals highhanded Democratic manipulation to come; Democrats say releasing the different maps was the only way to move the process forward given the panel’s deadlines.

But even if you try to read the maps as starting positions, some features are puzzling. Why did Democrats in their proposal put Rep. Paul Tonko, a veteran Democrat from upstate Amsterdam, in the same district as GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik? It is easier to guess what motivated GOP mappers to put Democratic Long Island Reps. Tom Suozzi and Kathleen Rice in the same district.

Undoubtedly other riddles, suspicions and clashes will arise before this process is over early next year. Whether we’re calling it partisan, bipartisan or nonpartisan, that’s the nature of the redistricting beast.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

Did you miss an issue of The Point? Browse past newsletters here.